resizing question - hard bolt close and open

[bsumoba]

Boyd has explained about all you need to know about the dies and the results you can expect to get with them. I have a lot of experience with Shehane brass and the problems that may occur. If you get the shoulder bumped correctly and your brass chambers smoothly, and then has a hard lift after firing, then its probably because the base of the brass is a little big for your tight chamber. Then like Boyd said you'll need a slightly small die to bump the base diameter. Measure the base diameter of a fired case,(just above the web) after sizing it I think it should be at least .001" smaller.

I will add that this may be your problem as long as you have checked you chamber neck area for carbon build up, neck clearance and neck length. If no problems there ....then A hard bolt close can can only be caused by the shoulder bump or the base diameter too big.

thank you very much for the info. Yours and Boyd's info was very helpful and insightful and logically, makes sense to me.

I just measured as consistently as I can, just above the web area and got 0.4985" on fired brass and 0.4975" on some resized brass that was not yet loaded. On newly resized brass that now close with no resistance in my chamber, I also measured it at 0.4975". At the web, the measurements were pretty consistent regardless of fired or resized...around 0.4995-0.4990". My reamer spec shows 0.500" in this area.

My max brass length per my reamer spec is 2.165" and all my brass are around 2.155"
I run a good amount of neck clearance. .317" neck reamer, .3125" loaded round neck OD".
I ran a cheapo borescope/endoscope and could not see any noticeable carbon buildup.

This leads me to believe that it is truly just a shoulder bump issue.

Like Scott Harris said, I probably will have to size the brass down a bit more since I shot them with a bolt close that had some resistance on it them.

I'll fire the newly resized brass and then do a measurement to see what they come out to.

On a sidenote, I do recall that other firings earlier had carbon right up to the neck/shoulder junction and some had it just a tad below this section...probably due to the amount of neck clearance I run. On fired brass that was tighter, carbon only appeared about 90% of the neck and never got close to the neck/shoulder junction on the brass